A report on the building of a root-sewn boat available on Siida’s website

The Sámi Museum Siida and the Sámi Education Institute in Inari launched a cooperation project in the autumn of 2014 with the aim of building a traditional Skolt Sámi boat with root seams. The report tells, phase by phase, about the project and can now be found in Finnish and English at www.siida.fi.
The report on the building of a root-sewn boat is available at http://siida.fi/contents/collections/root-sewn-boat

The aim of the project was to restore a lost skill and to document the study and construction of a boat with root seams. Another aim was to record the memories the Skolt Sámi still have of building and using such boats.

According to historian and linguist T. I. Itkonen, the Skolt Sámi still built their boats completely without nails in the early 1900s.

The Skolt Sámi are the smallest Sámi group in Finland, and they have traditionally had fishing and reindeer herding as their sources of livelihood. Earlier, they used to follow an annual migration pattern that was largely determined by seasonal fishing conditions in their home region. The Skolt Sámi handicraft tradition is closely linked with livelihood – as with other Sámi groups, too; the boat that has been made by using the technique of root-sewing is a good example of this.